In case you didn’t catch Carbon Garden at Fire Arts Festival, check out our new teaser video for Burning Man.

Prefer HD?  Download here.

Check out the Hot Preview on KTVU.com about Fire Arts Festival. Some nice coverage of the event including Carbon Garden.

Video: http://www.ktvu.com/video/20046933/
Slideshow: http://www.ktvu.com/slideshow/entertainment/20046824/detail.html

Setup at Fire Arts Festival: KTVU Photo

That party was awesome.  It hit capacity, which is saying something in a 250,000 sqft warehouse.  There was tons of cool art, great music, Random Rab, Dov, Beats Antique, Dr Toast and Welder tore it up on the False Profit/Symbiosis stage.  People seemed to be having a really great time and we did too.

Carbon Garden looked beautiful and the collaboration with the Symbiosis stage went really well.  We just plunked our flowers on their stage and it looked great together.  No trouble with the fire marshall.  Some technical issues but False Profit Labs peeps were stellar.  And people loved controlling the fire on stage.

At one point the power went out to the sound and lights, but for some reason not to our fire.  Beats Antique was playing and one of the guys got up and did an acoustic violin solo.  Carbon Garden accompanied him with a fiery background by moving the fire in time with his playing.  The only light in the room was from our fire and it was really beautiful.

Fire Arts Festival is like a mini Burning Man without all that playa dust. Come play with fire in what is literally a fire carnival, with installations by our good friends Interpretive Arson, Rebecca Anders, Michael Christian, Dan Das Mann and Karen Cusolito, Wally Glenn’s flaming sands, and way more amazing fire art in a newly expanded area 3x bigger than last year’s.

There will be a Life-Size Mousetrap, the fiery Boiler Bar, The Golden Mean Snail car, The Hand of Man crushing up cars, Alan Rorie’s Neuron Chamber, and on stage Dan Cantrell’s Rootabaga Opera, El Circo, Fire Arts Collective, and many other fiery acts.

Our own Carbon Garden continues its week-long debut after an incredible opening at Sand by the Ton.

Fire Arts Festival in its 10th year of blowing up Oakland every July is Wednesday, July 15 through Saturday July 18 8pm-Midnight

Tickets and directions here: http://www.thecrucible.org/events/fire-arts-festival/157.

Carbon Garden lit up in beautiful fire reflected and shimmering off glossy black carbon fiber flowers. All stems are placed on our flower patch bases and ready to be lifted on to the Symbiosis stage at Sand by the Ton.

The party is tonight from 4pm-4am. Go to http://www.thebigartexperience.com for tickets.

At American Steel in Oakland this Saturday night Carbon Garden will fire up its carbon fiber flowers for the very first time. Dancing to the beat of False Profit and Symbiosis DJs: Tinker, Dr Toast, Welder, Heyoka, Beats Antique, Random Rab and Dov, our first 20 flowers on the stage will emanate tendrils, twists and outright blasts of fire with up to three foot flame tails each!

Carbon Garden will also appear at Fire Arts Festival in Oakland Wednesday through Saturday, July 15-18.

Carbon Garden is filled with mysterious flowering life forms–flowers up to ten feet tall with 3 foot blooms made entirely of space age carbon fiber. The Garden has four portals with a central patch facing east to catch the sunrise. Wandering through the garden, sensors detect your presence, process your motion and respond in tendrils and waves of fire with up to 30 three-foot flame tails. Swaddled in firelight and zen themed music, Carbon Garden is the perfect place for all life forms to seek respite and connect.

SAND BY THE TON
http://www.thebigartexperience.com for info and PRE-SALE tickets!

200 tons of sand (REALLY!), 5 swimming pools, multiple stages, 250,000 square feet, Oakland’s newest indoor beach!!!

Presented by: DAN DAS MANN & KAREN CUSOLITO (BIG ART STUDIOS at AMERICAN STEEL), CIRCUS METROPOLUS, DUSTFISH, SPACE COWBOYS, SYMBIOSIS, FALSE PROFIT, NEUROWEAPON, GRAVITY POINT, OPULENT TEMPLE

Featuring:
MAJOR MONUMENTAL SCULPTURE and INSTALLATION by: DAN DAS MANN & KAREN CUSOLITO, THE FLAMING LOTUS GIRLS, CYCLECIDE HEAVY PEDAL BIKE RODEO, MICHAEL CHRISTIAN, OMEGA RECOIL, FALSE PROFIT LABS, ORION FREDERICKS, MICHAEL STURTZ, MARK McGOTHIGAN, KINETIC STEAM WORKS, JUSTIN GRAY, EVAN TRACY and….

LIVE MUSIC and PERFORMANCE presented by DUSTFISH & CIRCUS METROPOLUS featuring:
THE MUTAYTOR, MERMEN, EXTRA ACTION MARCHING BAND, GOOFERMAN, VAU DE VIRE, THE ERIC McFADDEN TRIO, POLKACIDE, BEATS ANTIQUE, 999 EYES, MARK GROWDEN, DROP MOTION, SOLAR FLARE, DEPARTMENT OF SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION, BOILER BAR SEASIDE SANITARIUM AND MEDICINE SHOW, THE BURLEY SISTERS by SuDoNu and more

ELECTRONIC MUSIC by: SPACE COWBOYS, OPULENT TEMPLE, SYMBIOSIS, FALSE PROFIT, NEURO WEAPON, GRAVITY POINT
Featuring: Syd Gris, Dutch, Vinkalmann, Cosmic Selector, Jeff Taisch, Random Rab, Welder, Heyoka, Dov, Dr Toast, Tinker, Adnan, Michael Tello, T-dUb, Mace, Timmy, Robb Green, Micah J, Pork Chop, Brad Robinson, Mancub, Kaptn Kirk, Ernie Trevino, Aaron Jae, Tamo

4 live music stages, 4 electronic music stages, full boardwalk carnival midway with rides, 200 tons of sand with 5 swimming pools (swimwear encouraged), a quarter million square feet of space under one roof, thousands of your best friends, more lights blinkin’ than ever blinked… bookoo (6) bars….you thought you knew the drill till you came here.

Please Help Us Help You Get Lost…..

JULY 11, 2009 @ THE AMERICAN STEEL BUILDING 1960 Mandela Parkway Oakland CA
$25 presale tix & more info @ www.thebigartexperience.com $30 @ door $125 VIP (check the site for VIP info, includes a 50 ft. yacht suspended from the ceiling)
4PM-LATE free BBQ 4-7pm Close to BART~LATE NIGHT BUS SHUTTLE TO SF!~ample secure parking
21+ (sorry)
and, thank you.

We’ll be at the LA Coliseum this weekend for Electric Daisy Carnival playing with fire for the likes of Thievery Corporation, Groove Armada, Paul Oakenfold and The Crystal Method.

If you’re in the Los Angeles Area, come by and see your heartbeat projects in a ring of 40 torches. Every palpitation of your pattering heart signals giant bursts of fire.

False Profit Labs in Los Angeles Times: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-guidefeature25-2009jun25,0,12845.story

Carbon Fiber Gear posted the second in a series of 3 guest blogs by False Profit Labs about the making of Carbon Garden. Come for the carbon fiber flowers that shoot fire, stay for the many super cool items made out of carbon fiber.
http://www.carbonfibergear.com/carbon-fiber-garden-series-part-2-10-foot-tall-carbon-fiber-flowers-that-shoot-3-feet-of-fire/

Carbon fiber fabrication
We’re not masters of making precision-molded carbon fiber parts.  But we are totally masters at stretching, sculpting and folding the material into really cool looking flowers with beautiful finish inside and out, with interfaces to connect to the stems.

Whit and Brett with Carbon Garden prototype flower and sign

Our process is quick and repeatable, laying the carbon fiber over custom molds that we’ve copied with a vacuum former, or just some beach balls.

Aldo and Sarah work in the garage flower nursery

Erik Walker has been leading the charge here with Brett Levine, MaryAnn Hulsman, Eric Nguyen, Jascha Sohl-Dickstein, Mark Abel, Matt Silvey, Tony Godshall, Sandy Martino, Sara Chieco, Sarah Oitzinger, Aldo Franciscolo, Andy Lee, and Gia Alam.  We are reinforcing 11 blooms, making more, and getting ready to install LiveSpark Flame Elements.

Using the ShopBot CNC Router down at TechShop we can cut precision drawings into beautiful glossy carbon fiber sheets.  We just ordered a diamond end mill that will make for even faster and cleaner edges.  Andy Lee and Erik Walker on CAD are building models for new geometric petals and metal part drawings ready for the CNC plasma cutter and sheet metal brake.

We’re experimenting with carbon fiber threads and sleeves to make “grass” and other interesting flower shapes and stems.

Making carbon fiber "grass"

Interaction and Music
Mary is building Max/MSP software to control flower fire behavior.  Bash is building a sensor array to detect when people enter and leave the garden.  The flowers will have two modes: one for when no people are around and another when people enter.  JD is writing original music that is really zen and blissed out.  The music will be triggered dynamically and layered with other sounds for five channels of audio (one for each flower patch).

Mary develops interaction software

Stems!

Whit Bissell, Ian Baker and Nicole Aptekar are working in the blacksmith shop at The Crucible on steel stems.  They have been taught to use the forge, bending tools and power hammers by Chris a master blacksmith and teacher there. The results are stunning.  Beautifully textured steel pipes, bent into organic curves.  They have already made 24 4′ stems and are planning to build 8 more 10′ stems out of even larger diameter pipe.

Whit, Ian and Nicole working in the blacksmith shop

The largest power hammer moves a 100LB weight up and down, smashing the red hot steel pipe. Fun danger.

Events
We are slated to bring 20 flowers to American Steel for Sand by the Ton on July 11: http://www.headlesspoint.com/sand, where not so coincidentally False Profit will be DJing on the Symbiosis stage with our flowers.  July 15-18 we move our flowers down the street in Oakland to the Fire Arts Festival.  We leave for Burning Man on August 29.

On June 12, the Isle of Man TTGXP motorcycle race, the world’s first carbon free grand prix.  Montano will be riding San Francisco’s own Mission Motors electric motorcycle, the fastest production electric sport bike in the world.

Mission One

In collaboration with Mission Motors, False Profit Labs is a leading sponsor of Tom Montano riding the Mission One.  “With a top speed of 150 mph, a 150-mile range and unparalleled access to torque, the Mission One surpasses the performance figures of other production electric motorcycles and gives chase to gas-powered incumbents.“

Tom Montano

Catch up on latest breaking race news.
Read more about our racer and Mission Motors.